Monday, December 10, 2007

I have posted articles about and by Dr. Roger Pielke, Sr. on this blog previously. He is speaking out again here about some of the key issues involved in the global warming/climate change debate. Most importantly, he rejects the notion that atmospheric CO2 is the primary driver of climate change. He is very critical of the United Nation's IPCC. He thinks the current computer climate models are inadequate to predict future climate changes and should NOT be used to make policy decisions. Please read the article for more information.Also note that these views are from a highly respected climate scientist, and Professor (now retired) and affiliated with two major universities.Peter

Dr. Roger Pielke, Sr."Scientific rigor has been sacrificed,and poor policy and political decisions will inevitably follow."

Roger Pielke Sr. is a retired professor of atmospheric science at Colorado State University, Ft. Collins, and a senior research scientist at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Since July 2005 he has written and maintained Climate Science, a blog that serves as a scientific forum for dialogue and commentary on climate issues. With William R. Cotton, he is the co-author of Human Impacts on Weather and Climate (Cambridge University Press, 2007). And over the past summer he co-hosted a conference entitled "Land Use and Climate Change," in Boulder, Colorado. While Dr. Pielke rejects being characterized as a "global warming skeptic," his work is unwaveringly critical of the current conventional wisdom regarding climate change and what to do about it. EcoWorld Editor Ed Ring recently caught up with Dr. Pielke, who had the following to say on the topic:

EcoWorld: How would you say that current conventional wisdom regarding climate change has gotten it wrong?

Pielke: In terms of climate change and variability on the regional and local scale, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports, the Climate Change Science Program (CCSP) report on surface and tropospheric temperature trends, and the U.S. National Assessment [of Climate Change] have overstated the role of the radiative effect of the anthropogenic increase of carbon dioxide (CO2) in relation to a diversity of other human climate- forcing mechanisms. Indeed, many research studies incorrectly oversimplify climate change by characterizing it as being dominated by the radiative effect of human-added CO2. But while prudence suggests that we work to minimize our disturbance of the climate system (since we don't fully understand it), by focusing on just one subset of forcing mechanisms, we end up seriously misleading policymakers as to the most effective way of dealing with our social and environmental vulnerability in the context of the entire spectrum of environmental risks and other threats we face today.

Pielke: Global and regional climate models have not demonstrated themselves to be skillful predictors of regional and local climate change and variability over multidecadal time scales. For example, in the case of sea ice, the models are consistent with the decrease in Arctic sea ice in recent years, but they cannot explain the multiyear increase in Antarctic sea ice (including a record level this year). With respect to extreme weather, a much more important issue than how greenhouse gases are altering our climate is society's greatly increased vulnerability to extreme weather events -a direct result not of changes in weather but of increased settlement by expanding human populations into low-lying coastal regions, floodplains, and marginal arid land.

EcoWorld: But what about the northern icecap shrinking this September to possibly its smallest size in history (exposing more than 1 million square miles of open water) or the comments of Robert Correll, chairman of the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment, regarding recent observations in Greenland ("We have seen a massive acceleration of the speed with which these glaciers are moving into the sea")? Is something new and alarming happening?

Pielke:These examples represent selected observations that promote the view that human-input carbon dioxide is dominating climate change.However, the climate is - and always will be - changing. Thus, although human activity certainly affects the way in which climate varies and changes, actual global observations present a much more complex picture than that represented by the two examples listed above. For example, Antarctic sea ice reached a record maximum coverage in 2007, and the globally averaged lower atmosphere has not warmed in the last nine years (and, in fact, is cooler than it was in 1998).In addition, there are regions of the world where glaciers are advancing (such as New Zealand, parts of the Himalayas, and Norway). However, this information - which conflicts with the projections of the multi-decadal global climate models and the 2007 IPCC report - has been almost completely ignored by policymakers and the media.

EcoWorld: What role have alterations in land use played in climate change?

Pielke: Changes in land use by humans and the resulting alterations in weather and hydrology are major drivers of long-term regional and global climate patterns - yet the 2007 IPCC Statement for Policymakers largely ignores their importance (despite extensive documentation in research literature). Along with the diverse influences of aerosols on climate, land use effects (caused, for example, by deforestation, desertification, and conversion of land to farming) may be at least as important in altering the weather as the changes in climate patterns associated with the radiative effect of carbon dioxide and other well-mixed greenhouse gases. Moreover, land use and land cover changes will continue to exert an important influence on the Earth's climate for the next century.The reason for this is that even if the globally averaged surface temperature change over time ends up being close to zero in response to land use and land cover change and variability, the regional changes in surface temperature, precipitation, and other climate metrics could be as large as or larger than those that result from the anthropogenic increase of greenhouse gases. Moreover, people and ecosystems experience the effects of environmental change regionally, not as global averaged values. Thus, the issue of a "discernable human influence on global climate" misses the obvious, in that we have been altering climate by land use and land cover change ever since humans began large-scale alterations of the land surface.

EcoWorld: What were the main conclusions to come out of your recent conference focusing on the land use changes that affect the Earth's climate?

Pielke: This meeting reconfirmed the first order role of land management as a climate forcing mechanism. These findings supported the conclusions of the 2005 National Research Council report "Radiative Forcing of Climate Change: Expanding the Concept and Addressing Uncertainties," which identified land use change as having a major effect on climate. Unfortunately, the role of land surface processes was underreported in the body of the IPCC report and was essentially ignored in the IPCC Statement for Policymakers.

EcoWorld: Sticking with land use changes: Do you think that tropical forests create a thermostatic effect that moderates extreme weather? And following on that, do you think tropical deforestation could be as significant a driver in climate change as anthropogenic CO2?

Pielke: Tropical deforestation clearly has an effect on both regional and global climate that is at least as important as the radiative effect of adding CO2. When forests are removed, not only does the climate system lose the biodiversity and other benefits of that environment, the vegetation loses its ability to dynamically respond in ways that reduce extreme weather fluctuations. For example, when trees access deeper water through their roots, the resulting transpiration of water vapor into the atmosphere (making rain more likely) can help ameliorate dry conditions when the large-scale weather pattern is one of drought.

EcoWorld: What is your criticism of the IPCC?

Pielke: Mainly the fact that the same individuals who are doing primary research into humans' impact on the climate system are being permitted to lead the assessment of that research. Suppose a group of scientists introduced a drug they claimed could save many lives: There were side effects, of course, but the scientists claimed the drug's benefits far outweighed its risks. If the government then asked these same scientists to form an assessment committee to evaluate their claim (and the committee consisted of colleagues of the scientists who made the original claim as well as the drug's developers), an uproar would occur, and there would be protests. It would represent a clear conflict of interest. Yet this is what has happened with the IPCC process. To date, either few people recognize this conflict, or those that do choose to ignore it because the recommendations of the IPCC fit their policy and political agenda. In either case, scientific rigor has been sacrificed, and poor policy and political decisions will inevitably follow.

EcoWorld: How effective are current climate computer models in helping us understand global climate trends?

Pielke: Using global climate models to improve our understanding of how the system works represents a valuable application of such tools, but the term sensitivity study should be used to characterize these assessments. In sensitivity studies, a subset of the forcings and/or feedback of the climate system are perturbed to examine their response. Since the computer model of the climate system is incomplete (meaning it doesn't include all of the important feedbacks and forcings), what the IPCC is really doing is conducting a sensitivity study.The IPCC reports, however, inaccurately present their assessment as a "projection" - one that's widely interpreted by policymakers and others as being able to skillfully forecast the future state of the climate system. But even one of the IPCC's leading authors, Kevin Trenberth, has gone on record reminding people of the limitations of the models used in its projections. Says Trenberth, "There are no predictions by IPCC & and there never have been." He further states, "None of the models used by IPCC are initialized to the observed state, and none of the climate states in the models correspond even remotely to the current observed climate."Indeed, says Trenberth, "The current projection method works to the extent it does because it utilizes differences from one time to another, and the main model bias and systematic errors are thereby subtracted out. This assumes linearity. It works for global forced variations, but it cannot work for many aspects of climate, especially those related to the water cycle."Thus, as clarified even by one of the key IPCC contributors (who has a vested interest in the acceptance of the 2007 IPCC report), current climate models clearly cannot accurately model observed real-world changes in climate. Global model results projected out decades into the future should never be interpreted as skillful forecasts. Instead, they should be interpreted as sensitivity studies on limited variables. When authors of research papers use definitive words (such as "will occur") and display model output with specific time periods in the future, they are misleading policymakers and other people who use this information.

EcoWorld: What policies should be considered to deal with climate change? Is reducing CO2 emissions part of the solution?

Pielke: Reduction of greenhouse gas emissions can only serve as a useful "environmental currency" as long as it provides the benefits needed to reduce the risk to critical environmental and social resources. As such, it needs to be part of a win-win strategy that provides a diversity of benefits. With energy efficiency and energy independence, for example, everyone benefits. As the "currency" for these benefits, however, greenhouse gas emission reduction represents an unnecessarily blunt instrument if there are more effective ways to reduce the risks to societal and environmental resources. Moreover, greenhouse gas policies can produce serious unintended negative consequences such as an increase in carcinogenic emissions when biodiesel is used, or reductions in biodiversity and alterations in climate when land management practices convert large areas to biofuels.Greenhouse gas emission reductions, relative to other environmental currencies, should be evaluated with respect to their ability to reduce risk to essential social and environmental resources. In this framework, greenhouse emission reductions are only useful if they provide real benefit to those resources. Thus, if a policy made for other reasons also happens to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, you clearly have a win-win situation. The current focus on using reductions in CO2 emissions as the primary currency for achieving benefits to society and the environment, however, clearly represents a very flawed approach.

20 comments:

Anonymous
said...

Pete, now Pete, the following is an excellent exercise in reading closely.

Because, if you read closely, you will see that Pielke’s message is not, is NOT, that global warming should be disregarded – in fact, it would seem that he IS rather concerned with the state of the climate. As your blog suggests, he is critical of the IPCC, but he is critical because they are not concerned enough about enough things. Overall, Pielke’s stance is that the IPCC has focused entirely too much on CO2, simplifying the debate for (presumably) matters of public appeal, and not enough on other factors which also play into the anthropocentric change of the world’s climate.

Okay, this can only become apparent by going through things together. Are you set? This is clearly going to take a while, many posts involved, so sit back and relax…

“Roger Pielke Sr. is a retired professor of atmospheric science at Colorado State University, Ft. Collins, and a senior research scientist at the University of Colorado, Boulder.”

Very clearly Dr. Pielke has the requisite qualifications. I think we can both agree on that.

“While Dr. Pielke rejects being characterized as a ‘global warming skeptic,’ his work is unwaveringly critical of the current conventional wisdom regarding climate change and what to do about it.”

Once again, the guy prefers not to be characterized as a “skeptic”; rather he is critical of how the citizens of the world are dealing with it the problems they themselves have created. Specifically, Pielke says:

The IPCC, the CCSP report on surface and tropospheric temperature trends, and the U.S. National Assessment “have overstated the role of the radiative effect of the anthropogenic increase of carbon dioxide (CO2) in relation to a diversity of other human climate- forcing mechanisms.”

In other words, Pete, CO2 is still a big concern; CO2, however, is not the only factor we have to worry about, it is one of a “diversity” of factors changing the climate. To put it even more simply, CO2 is a problem but it’s not the only one and institutional science is ignoring the other human climate-forcing problems we’ve created. That is his position. CO2 is bad, but there are more bad things out there and we’re not worrying enough about them.

Did I misread this? I mean, I’m sticking exactly to what your interview above said, right? What is your reading of Pielke’s claims?

Anon is someone known as a "useful idiot". In other words he/she is so blinded by their ideology, bias and angst, and maybe chronic constipation, that they can not see reality, or the totally absurd assumption that carbon dioxide is a major cause of global warming or "climate change". In the face of all the evidence to the contrary, they continue to deny the overwhelming evidence to the contrary. They continue to grasp at straws and blow smoke. Typical air-headed liberal.

But Godzookie, I was only riffing off Pete's own posting!! Pete put this up there! I didn't make this stuff up - see for yourself - it's all in Pete's blog. It's not me that says this, it's right there - Pielke says it! Pielke says it! Why are you picking on me?! Go get mad at Pete! (I figure you are either spouse or spawn)

Better yet, focus that high beam intellect of yours and write a letter to Pielke yourself. I'm sure he'd be very interested. Kind of interesting, isn't it, when one actually looks closely at what the global warming community is saying?

By the way, "can not" is actually a single word: as in Godzookie "cannot" ride a horse, blow actual radioactive fire, or address the issue at hand.

Alas,This Anon character, this whiny internet troll is patheticaly poorly informed about what is really going on below the mainstream media radar. Consider the following....

Global Warming Science and Public PolicyGlobal Warming A Debate at ...In the April/May 2009 Journal of the Chartered Insurance Institute of London, Paul Maynard and Christopher published an article entitled Let Cool Heads Prevail, expressing grave scientific doubt about the supposed magnitude of the anthropogenic effect on global temperature, and providing substantial evidence from the published data and from the peer-reviewed literature.

Uh huh...have you looked at who your panel on this is? Do you trust the "Journal of Chartered Insurance Institute" which works for corporate interests?

Interesting that almost every example, including this one, that this site cites is a) corporate and / or b) made up of unqualified or tangentially qualified people. Again and again. Plus the above site spends a good deal of its time trying to sell books about the climate debate.

I swear to you, Pete and Godzookie and whoever this new anon. -- who I will call "Sparklebright" -- is, I came into this whole debate with a very open mind. Slowly, after looking closely at Pete's Place and at the sources that it feeds off of, I'm becoming convinced that maybe global climate change IS valid. I sure as hell hope not, but if these examples are the best that the deniers can produce (not to mention the steady stream of whining, yes whining, and ad hominem attacks), then this either speaks to the limits of denier science or the political limits of the deniers - or both.

I'll make a mental note and circle back to Let Cool Heads Prevail after we have done with Pielke and the rest of Pete's list. Then, after we have looked at the "scientists" on Pete's Place, we can begin to cross-post about the actual science. I have begun to wonder what Hansen et al actually say. Should be time consuming but interesting, no? And it should add a good deal of interesting dialogue to this site!!!

P.S. - Sparklebright, I should point out that this particular thread is dedicated entirely to Pete's post on Pielke (catch that alliteration!)and so anything posted here (and on the majority of the threads) come straight from Pete's Place. Thus any information I have comes from Pelkie via Pete. I'm not making this up, my droogy - see for yourself. Read the post!!

Pielke is not actually a denier. His point is that the argument (the way that science is being presented) is overly simplified.

“Indeed, many research studies incorrectly oversimplify climate change by characterizing it as being dominated by the radiative effect of human-added CO2. But while prudence suggests that we work to minimize our disturbance of the climate system (since we don't fully understand it), by focusing on just one subset of forcing mechanisms, we end up seriously misleading policymakers as to the most effective way of dealing with our social and environmental vulnerability in the context of the entire spectrum of environmental risks and other threats we face today.

Okay, again reading closely, what Pielke is saying is that we mislead policy makers when we only focus on CO2 and neglect other forcing mechanisms. CO2 is not the only forcing system, but it is the only one we are focusing on. Get that? I like this line, “…prudence suggests that we work to minimize our disturbance of the climate system…”

Hmmmm…does sound like he’s voicing a warmist opinion, doesn’t it?

Now, his next point is that climate models cannot be trusted (a little like Botkin), but his larger concern is for the fate of humanity in this world that we are altering. You tinted this section red, Pete, so I guess you too are concerned with increasingly extreme weather and low-lying regions threatened by rising sea levels:

“With respect to extreme weather, a much more important issue than how greenhouse gases are altering our climate is society's greatly increased vulnerability to extreme weather events - a direct result not of changes in weather but of increased settlement by expanding human populations into low-lying coastal regions, floodplains, and marginal arid land.”

Yeah, I'm beginning to think your source is a warmist there, Pete. And a convincing one at that. Thanks for sharing.

Anon.....Following your comments about Pielke Sr., you truly are an idiot, and obviously unqualified to judge his words or his beliefs.

He is far from a "warmist", whatever that made-up word means. He recognizes humans have an impact of micro-climate. Have you heard of urban "heat-islands" for example.

What he and every honest scientist I know, which includes most of them, recognizes, is the blatent distortions and exagerations pushed by people like Hansen, and picked up and magnified by the gullible and drama-seeking mainstream media, and lapped up by useful fools like you.

If carbon dioxide emissions are not a significant "driver" of climate change, or "global warming", which it is obvious they are not, then what can we do about controlling the Earth's climate? The answer? Not much. Rest easy and spend your money on something important.

Yup, more name calling, and after I gave you such a nice, warm, sprightly name, Sparklebright, something the kids would enjoy. I'm really buggin' ya, ain't I?

Which "honest scientists" do you know, Sparklebright? I've been going through Pete's list (which he asked me to do, by the way) and "honest scientists" are few and far between. And, as I posted before, I'm just riffing off the post above - if you disagree, show where I'm wrong. "Climate driver" is Pielke's term, not mine, and I took the term "warmist" from Pete's Place; it's all over - I'd never seen that made up word before I visited this highly intellectually charged site.

As long as you play deliberately obtuse and lamely assert over and over again simple dogma, you will continue to preach to the choir and nothing more.

Anon,BTW....Pete is a scientist.....you're a political activist....a bottom-dwelling scum sucker.....I picked up on that right away....so, to be polite.....crawl back in your hole.You're an embarrasment to humanity.

As I alluded to earlier, I got in a wee bit of trouble and am currently incarcerated(never, ever plead "no-contest" and, for Pete's sake, never settle for a public defender if you can help it). While relaxing in my minimum security hotel, I finished my G.E.D. Thank God that Uncle Sam allows us degenerates to mooch off you hard working, level headed, well informed tax payers.

I wasn't sure what to make of the color question...I'm Caucasian. My hair is red. My eyes are blue. Born in the U.S.A.

And I really must protest this treatment! I was being sarcastic when I asked you to call me names. Sheesh! Do I have to explain everything to you people? And Pete, did you think I wouldn't call your bluff here? I will go away if you want me to, I've made that apparent before. Are you really whimping out? I sincerely am learning a good deal but I rather imagine what I am learning is exactly what you do not want people to learn and that's the truth.

Ummm...is that Pete speaking? Or Godzookie? This site has several personalities, like that little girl in The Exorcist.

Pete, do YOU want me to go away? Are you really so unsure of your beliefs that they can't stand up to scrutiny? Or perhaps scrutiny is too painful when the bright light of observation is shone around the dark corners of Pete's Place. Remember, boys and girls, the golden rule: You are entitled to your own opinion; you are not entitled to your own facts. This site proves as much.

Well, I haven’t heard back from Pete, so I will just soldier on ahead. The question was put to Pielke about certain specific changes to arctic ice caps. Pielke replies that -

“These examples represent selected observations that promote the view that human-input carbon dioxide is dominating climate change. However, the climate is - and always will be - changing. Thus, although human activity certainly affects the way in which climate varies and changes, actual global observations present a much more complex picture than that represented by the two examples listed above.”

And once again, the problem Pielke has is with the over-simplification of data, not the absence of it.

He goes on to point out that while these specific glaciers may have been retreating, others are advancing in other parts of the world, temperatures have remained stable for nine years (at the time of the interview) and Antarctic ice had reached record proportions. His real issue with the IPCC is that these facts have “been almost completely ignored by policymakers and the media.”

All very well and good. I wish that he had gone on to explain the significance of these various factors, however, and what their relationship to human climate forcings might be.

A little later Pielke does say that weather is always changing (a strange thing to argue, because I think we all know that) but he does not say whether or not he thinks these specific changes to glacial mass or temperature are because of human activity. The point, I guess, is that even if the Antarctic has the biggest ice cubes in history, does that mean anthropocentric climate change is responsible for this phenomena or not? As I understood the concept (and I admit I understand it very poorly), anthropocentric climate change was not just overall global warming, but warming in some regions, cooling in others, and more extreme weather overall. Pielke does not elaborate on if these changes are taking place, although his answers certainly seem to indicate that they are.

All right, in an effort to wrap this segment of our relationship I’m going to skip to one last statement – I’ll leave the closer observation of your own post to you Pete, and then you can explain, as best you’re able, its meaning to Godzookie. EcoWorld asks: “What policies should be considered to deal with climate change? Is reducing CO2 emissions part of the solution?”

Pielke responds: “Reduction of greenhouse gas emissions can only serve as a useful ‘environmental currency’ as long as it provides the benefits needed to reduce the risk to critical environmental and social resources. As such, it needs to be part of a win-win strategy that provides a diversity of benefits. With energy efficiency and energy independence, for example, everyone benefits.”

And once again, we see that what Pielke is actually saying is NOT that we should stop worrying about greenhouse gasses, but that the reduction in greenhouse gasses only serves a purpose if it actually helps those resources that are in danger; in order to be a win-win scenario, there must be multiple results and no just one (the reduction of CO2) to an energy policy, and this can include reductions to greenhouses gasses within it but it should be part of broader, more inclusive policy changes. Energy efficiency and energy independence are too laudable goals that will benefit all scenarios, not just the CO2 scenario.

(He must have been doing an email interview because no one really talks this way.)

Okay, so where are we? Well, I can see why you were confused by this – he is overtly critical of those people and institutions which you disparage the most. But his meaning is far more complex and nuanced than you have given him credit for. In a way, I think Pielke makes the same mistake that people like John Kerry did: he speaks with diction and language that is simply too complicated and takes far too much effort for most people to want to delve into, particularly when so many Americans crave simplicity and a simple dichotomy in their world views. So many of us seem to require an “Us vs. Them” mentality to make up their minds on anything; one side needs to have all the right and one side needs to have all the wrong for a significant number of the American people to be happy. For this reason, I think, people cannot simply say “scientists are making a mistake” or “I am not convinced and would like a broader scope of opinions” – no, people need to believe that scientists are “riding the gravy train” or “getting rich off the taxpayers” or some other exaggerated, paranoid rational, or they need to demonize the other side (and yes, Pete, the warmists seem to do the exactly same thing on the other end of the spectrum although I don’t think they wax with the same level of vitriol).

Honestly, this is why people like Sarah Palin, Michael Moore, Glen Beck, Al Frankin, Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh and the rest of that awful crew, right and left, are making such huge amounts of money – they give people the simple, black and white version of the world that they want to feel secure and superior. James Hansen does this, and this is why Pielke is so critical of his scientific colleague.